From Reporting to Sustainable Business Intelligence

ESGflow was created as the result of the entrepreneurial spirit, curiosity, and strong work ethic of two long-standing friends - Ilija and Kristina.

Ilija, a full-stack developer and software architect, observes the business ecosystem through the lens of processes, systems, and automation. His goal is to use technology to improve the way companies collect, process, and use data.

Kristina, a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade, continuously develops her expertise in portfolio management, sustainable economy, financial analytics, and the application of artificial intelligence in business decision-making through her scientific research and teaching work.

While studying ESG reporting and the consequences of sustainable and unsustainable business practices, we identified a clear market need: ESG reporting remains fragmented, often burdened by manual work, inconsistent data, and insufficient alignment between business objectives, ESG KPI indicators, and actual operational processes.

Companies generate a significant amount of data every day through their interactions with employees, suppliers, clients, regulators, and the wider community. These data are often dispersed across financial statements, invoices, internal records, policies, procedures, questionnaires, and supporting documentation. However, connecting them into a meaningful, measurable, and analytically grounded ESG framework remains one of the key challenges.

At the same time, regulatory and methodological frameworks such as GRI, ISSB, and CSRD increasingly guide companies toward understanding double materiality: how a company affects the environment and society, and how sustainability, climate risks, and social changes affect its financial performance.

This is where the core idea of ESGflow emerged: ESG should not be merely a formal obligation within non-financial reporting, but rather an internal company know-how - a tool for better understanding business operations, managing risks, and creating long-term value.

ESGflow is a web-based system that enables the upload of relevant documents, data processing, extraction of financial and non-financial information, and interaction with the system through natural language.

Its purpose is to help companies transform ESG data into structured indicators, time series, analytical insights, and an AI-generated narrative ready for reporting.

We began developing the software through the Environmental pillar, using reports from a local manufacturing company. During this process, we observed that business documentation most often presents monetary values, while physical units of consumption (such as quantities of materials, diesel, natural gas, electricity, and other resources) are often unavailable or unstructured.

For this reason, we developed an approach that enables the estimation of physical units based on the average prices of materials, energy sources, and other inputs. These physical units are then converted into estimated CO2 emissions using relevant conversion factors, including the methodological guidelines of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.

In this way, ESGflow connects financial data with environmental indicators and provides deeper insight into the actual environmental impact of business operations.

For the Social and Governance dimensions of ESG reporting, we developed a more agile approach based on questionnaires, response validation, and supporting documentation.

Working conditions, governance policies, codes of conduct, anti-corruption procedures, decision-making structures, and employee relations are areas that are often qualitative, sensitive, and open to different interpretations.

Therefore, ESGflow enables data collection from relevant sectoral and hierarchical levels within the company. Based on responses, submitted documentation, and predefined criteria, the system forms quantitative indicators and time series even in areas traditionally perceived as predominantly qualitative.

ESGflow was developed as a prototype demonstrating how ESG reporting can become more structured, measurable, transparent, and analytically grounded.

Its value lies in connecting financial statements, non-financial data, additional inputs, ESG KPI indicators, and AI-generated narrative into a single system.

Our goal is to enable companies to better understand their own impact on the environment and society, while also providing stakeholders with a clearer, more reliable, and methodologically grounded insight into their operations.

ESGflow represents a step toward a new generation of ESG reporting - reporting that is not only a regulatory obligation, but also a tool for better decision-making, long-term risk management, and the creation of sustainable value.

We believe in business that grows responsibly, uses resources thoughtfully, and creates a positive impact for society, the environment, and future generations.